Re-Markings Vol. 22 No. 2 September 2023
Editorial
On 25 August 1944, while the Allied forces were entering
the French territory to liberate France from German occupation during World War
II, Adolf Hitler ordered his generals occupying
the French capital to reduce the city of Paris to a pile of ruins before they
departed. He asked in authoritative desperation "Brennt Paris?"
("Is Paris Burning?"). The words in Hitler’s anxiety-ridden
question provided the title to the 1965 best seller Is Paris Burning
written by acclaimed journalists and writers, Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre. A year
later in 1966 came the film
by the same name directed by René Clément.
With all the satanic powers that Hitler had at
his command – a well-knit, hard-working population of 70,000,000 who stood
ideologically inspired, physically trained, and materially equipped for the
supreme business of making war and causing the genocide of millions of Jews –
he could not have the privilege of seeing the spectacle of Paris burning.
Ironically, what the tyrannous German dictator
could not attain in the August of 1944 became a gruesome reality on 27 June
2023 when a French policeman shot and killed Nahel Merzouk, a 17-year-old boy
at a traffic checkpoint in Nantarre, a suburb of Paris. Nahel, of Moroccan and
Algerian descent and the only child of his mother, was a "kid who used
rugby to get by"…and who “was someone who had the will to fit in socially
and professionally, not some kid who dealt in drugs or got fun out of juvenile
crime" according to Jeff Puech, president of the Ovale Citoyen group in
France. He was remembered as a kind, helpful child who had never raised a hand
to anyone and was never violent. According to the testimony of his beloved
mother, the police officer who shot him "saw an Arab face, a little kid,
and wanted to take his life." The killing of Nahel for not stopping at the
checkpoint while driving his Mercedes provoked unprecedented violence resulting
in vandalization, torching of government property and vehicles, rioting and
destruction. Paris indeed was burning and so were many other towns caught in
the flare of outrage that spilled onto the streets of France against organized
officialdom.
For those who have known France as the land that
venerates in its constitution and practice the avowed ideals of “liberty, equality,
fraternity,” the Nahel incident brings to the fore once again the ambivalence
of power equations in dem-ocracies by reminding us of a similar event in Minneapolis, Minnesota where George Floyd, a Black man, was
murdered by Derek Chauvin, a 44-year-old white police officer, on 25 May 2020.
Besides the scenes of rioting, loot and arson, witnessed in many cities of the
U.S., Floyd’s death led to widespread international protests in various
countries including France.
In what is believed to be the world’s most
powerful democracy, the Statue of Liberty stands majestically welcoming
immigrants from all parts of the globe to try their fortune in the United States
of America. However, when we see Frederick Douglas in his 1852 speech asking,
“What to the slave is the Fourth of July” and Ralph Ellison describing in his
1951 novel, Invisible Man, the Statue of Liberty “lost in the fog,” we can
visualize how democratic principles and democratic practices are constantly at
variance.
Likewise, we are reminded of the death of
Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian girl of Kurdish origin, in police custody on
16 September 2022. The self-proclaimed guardians of morality found her guilty
of violating the sacred rules requiring women to cover their hair when in
public. The death of Mahsa led to massive protests and rioting that saw Iran
burning for months.
Events related to Nahel M., Floyd George, and
Mahisa Amini have one thing in common: they were all victims of systemic police
brutality. It is quite likely that the practitioners of power in unform
perceived a threat to their existence when they came across an Arab face, or a
man with black skin, or the hair of a young girl uncovered with a scarf. Even
in professed democracies it is not unusual to see law-enforcing agencies or
institutions place a curb on civil liberties for the suppression of dissent in
any form. In this context, I find it pertinent to mention a remark made by Aung
San Suu Kyi, human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner, in her essay
entitled “Freedom from Fear” (1990): “It is not power that corrupts but fear.
Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of
power corrupts those who are subject to it.”
Against the backdrop of incidents and
situations that reveal the state of endangered freedom and civil liberties, it
is appropriate to place in perspective the current edition of Re-Markings that
showcases issues and concerns bordering on oppression, discrimination and
exploitation on grounds of nation, class, race, caste, gender, colour, creed,
religion, language etc. The global outreach of the scholarly contributions in
the volume brings together the efforts of historians, writers, academics and
scholars to question and challenge the status quo created by centres of power
to keep those on the margins in their ‘place’. While burning cities have become
emblematic of the collective rage of suppressed dissent against authoritarian
approaches to the basic needs of common people, be it in France, U.S., Iran or
Manipur, we cannot insensitively turn our heads away and remain unconcerned.
When we get passionately involved in what and
how we write, we are automatically transformed from mere spectators to participants
in better causes. George Orwell had pointed out: “If
people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think
well, others will do their thinking for them.” It is, therefore, incumbent upon
each one of us to think for ourselves rather than allow others to do our part
of the thinking.
Nibir K. Ghosh
Chief Editor
CONTENTS
Viewpoints from California - Jonah Raskin - Walt Whitman & T. S. Eliot: A Personal Engagement / 7 The U.S. Supreme Court: A Primer / 10
Reconstructing and Demythologizing America’s Story: An Interview with Professor Kermit Roosevelt III on The Nation That Never Was - Robin Lindley / 13
Not Writing in the Mother Tongue - Miho Kinnas / 25
Krishna Baldev Vaid’s Hindi Ibārat and My Malayalam Pāṭhaṁ - K. Narayana Chandran / 31
South Asia as a Literary Category - Anisur Rahman / 42
Blended Learning in Educational Technology: Challenges and Opportunities – India’s Perspective - Shanker Ashish Dutt / 47
Melody of the Blues and the American Racial Dilemma: August Wilson’s Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
Nibir K. Ghosh / 54
The Cracked Mirror: An Examination of A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams - Shernavaz Buhariwala / 67
Re-telling (her) Stories: Sorties, Texts and - Contexts from Northeast India Sukalpa Bhattacharjee / 75
R. K. Narayan’s The Dark Room: A Story of Lost Opportunities -Yashu Rai / 89
Ecology, Spirituality and Sankaradeva - Nityananda Pattanayak / 96
Decolonising the Novel: A Study of Wilson Harris’ The Palace of the Peacock - Melissa Helen / 103
Arundhati Roy’s Azadi and My India - Pallavi Sharma Goyal / 110
Dalit Feminism and Meena Kandasamy’s Writings - Ruchi Singh / 117
Debt, an Eternal Curse in Kota Neelima’s Shoes of the Dead - Vikram Singh & Reshma Devi / 125
Single Indian Women as the Other in Eunice de Souza’s Novels: Dangerlok and Dev & Simran - Barsha Sahoo / 129
The Ontological Perspective of “Self” in Rushdie’s The Enchantress of Florence - Rajeev Kumar & Sovan Chakraborty / 136
Women and War: Redefining Historical Discourse in Svetlana Alexievich’s The Unwomaly Face of War - Amandeep Kaur / 143
Modes of Representation in Salman Rushdie’s The Moor’s Last Sigh - Paramba Dadhich / 151
The Final Confession (Short Story) - Sin Keong Tong / 157
Announcements / 160
Announcements
Call for Papers
Scholarly contributions are invited
from members of Re-Markings for a proposed Special Number/Section on the theme
“Transforming Lives in an Age of Artificial Intelligence: Orientations and
Challenges.” Papers may address any of the following areas:
1.
Literature-Technology
Interface.
2.
The
Digital Divide.
3.
ChatGPT
and Human Communication.
4.
Where
do we go from here?
5.
Impact
of artificial intelligence on upward mobility.
6.
Is
Orwellian ‘Big Brother’ watching us?
7.
Emerging
Utopian and Dystopian views of change.
8.
Social
Media: Boon or Bane?
9. Short films and OTT platforms.
10. Any other aspect
related to the basic theme.
Interested contributors should
submit an abstract of 150 words along with contact details and professional
affiliation to remarkings@hotmail.com by 20 September, 2023. Authors of
selected entries will be notified by 10 October, 2023. Thereafter, the complete
paper (2000-2500 words in MS Word format, MLA Style 9th edition) will
be required by 15 November, 2023.
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Invitation
to share
Re-Markings’ readers and
contributors are welcome to share their unique academic/professional
achievements on the Panorama section of the journal website www.re-markings.com
by sending details of the same with pictures/images to the Chief Editor at ghoshnk@hotmail.com
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